
Oass ^LA£c 





THE 



Confederate Dead 



Zwo Hbbvesses. 



WILLIAM C. P. BRECKINRIDGE. 






PRINTED BY 






JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY. 

LOUISVILLE, KV. 





WM. C. P. BRECKINRIDGE, 



^■A PLEA*- r?7^7<9 



History * of «the * Confederate *War 



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AT THE DECORATION OF THE CONFEDERATE GRAVES 

IN CAVE HILL CEMETERY, LOUISVILLE, 

KENTUCKY, MAY 26, 1879. 



fe 



By WM. C. p. BRECKINRIDGE. 






LOUISVILLE: 

JOHN P. MORTON & CO., PRINTERS. 

1887 



(A>-C 



EXPLANATORY NOTE. 



These addresses are now reprinted in this form at the re- 
quest of comrades whose wishes have controlled me. 

The first was delivered at the decoration of the Confederate 
graves in Cave Hill Cemetery, near Louisville, on May 26, 
1879; the second at Hopkinsville on May 19, 1887, at the un- 
veiling of the monument erected by John C. Latham, jr., Esq., 
formerly of Hopkinsville, now of New York, in honor of the 
Confederate dead buried in the Cemetery near that beautiful 
little city. 

At the unveiling of that monument addresses were delivered 
by Hon. James Breathitt, Rev. Dr. Charles F. Deems, and 
George O. Thompson, Esq., Mayor of Hopkinsville. 



ADDRESS. 



In this lovely and sacred city of the dead are buried the beautiful, 
the learned, the wise, and the loved. Around you on every side are 
holy graves in which lie until the resurrection morn the bodies of the 
mourned, and over which have been placed memorials of love and 
grief. Among these dead are men who gave honor to the great city 
whose spires and ascending smoke, the rising incense of profitable in- 
dustry, are in our sight; men whose virtues were living epistles read of 
all who came in contact with them, and whose lives were fit exem- 
plars for your children to imitate. And still more precious, scattered 
every where, are graves of pious mothers, idolized wives, of children 
whose death broke your hearts, of friends still mourned. And yet, 
all these honored and loved graves are passed by to-day, and this 
multitudinous throng of women and men, turning from grave of father 
and mother, of husband and wife, of child and sister and friend, of 
statesman, philanthropist, and sage, turning from the family group 
where the heart-pangs of the living can be read in the names of the dead, 
is gathered around these rows of mounds, and upon them have strewn 
fragrant flowers, and in honor of them have left home and the duties 
of arduous life. Why this unusual honor ? Why this resounding 
music, these exquisite flowers, this more significant gathering ? 
Whose graves are these to which this mournful but beautiful homage 
is rendered? Some stranger in our midst — another Anacharsis — a 
modern Herodotus, having just reached this city in his pilgrimage, 
turns to some grave gray-headed man bearing flowers, and asks with 
eager but restrained curiosity, " What is the meaning of this striking 
scene ? " What answer will you give, middle-aged man of business and 
care ? Or, if he should chance to ask you, fair matron, what reply 
would you return ? What reply can we to-day return to such question, 
when not another but our own hearts ask it? Here, to-day, in the 
sight of Almighty God, whose heavens bend to catch the answer ; in 
the midst of the graves of those we loved, whose spirits are witnesses 



6 A Pica for a History of the Confederate War. 

to this scene; in the hearing of our children, whose lives maybe 
molded in the likeness of our reply, I lay my hand upon my heart, 
and lift my eyes to God, and in the name of this assemblage avow that 
this homage is in honor of martyrs to liberty, who died for the right, 
and gave their lives in defense of truth ; and for the verity of this re- 
ply I confidently appeal to God and history. This is our answer to 
whomsoever may cavil or question; it is not our apology or defense. 
By the side of these graves we make neither apology nor defense. 

Fourteen years, this very day, have passed since the last Confed- 
erate surrender was made; eighteen since the echo of Sumter's guns 
announced that war in all its horrible reality had indeed befallen our 
unhappy land. 

Death has been busy during these years, and the actors in those 
four years of war are rapidly passing away, and a new generation is 
taking their places. The majority of those who hear mc were not par- 
ticipants in that struggle. 

The kindly powers of nature and the active industry of man are 
obliterating all the physical evidences of the camp, the trench, and bat- 
tle-field. The golden grain, or green grass, or tangled underbrush 
conceal the trench behind which human hearts bled to death, or on 
which heroic courage won glory and wrested victory. The ravaged 
fields have been refenced and the burnt homestead replaced with an 
humble but loved roof-tree, under which wife and little ones lie down 
to sleep. So, too, the stern necessities and the daily duties of life 
have called forth and absorbed all the energies of manhood and 
womanhood. Houses have been rebuilt, cities re-established, railways 
constructed, States regained, and liberties recovered. 

During these years, time and labor and necessity, the new duties, 
the new vocations, the new relations, have legislated, have molded, 
have modified until a new generation is entering into life under aus- 
pices, relations, and circumstances peculiar to this day. It is but nat- 
ural that the causes and events of our war should seem to be mere 
matters of history, unimportant save as a romance or a study, and that 
this feeling will grow each day. And as it grows there may be an ac- 
quiescence in the charge that these men whose graves we honor were 
indeed heroic men, but were rebels and traitors, who fought to pre- 
serve human slavery ; who rebelled without cause, and went to war for 
unholy purposes, and during that war committed grave excesses, per- 
mitted horrid cruelties; and that their defeat was necessary for hu- 
manity, liberty, and free government. Upon these graves and the 



A Flea for a History of the Confederate War. 7 

graves of all our dead and the good name of all our living has this 
charge been made. The ear of the world has been dinned with its 
clamor, and at the bar of every nation and of posterity we stand con- 
fronted with the charge. I do not come to answer it to-day, but I do 
come to plead that it be answered in its length and breadth, and the 
answer be made accurate and permanent. The only true answer is a 
complete and accurate history of the causes which produced the Con- 
federate war, the events of that war, civil and military, and of its re- 
sults. This history is the true monument we owe to the memory of 
our dead comrades, and this is the justification our children have a 
right to ask at our hands for their sakes. 

A history will be written. We owe it to every sentiment of honor, 
patriotism, and gratitude that at least we furnish the materials for a 
true history. It may be said that I am urging that all the animosities 
of that war be revived ; that after fourteen years of peace and com- 
mon citizenship, of social life and intermarriage, I am dragging forth 
the skeleton of those terrible days. Nay, not so. No one has more 
sincerely yearned for a return of true fraternity than I, and over these 
lowly but precious graves I am ready to do all that a gentleman and 
soldier, a patriot and citizen can in honor and duty do to secure for 
our country and our children a true, generous, equal destiny. But truth 
is the only corner-stone on which peace can be built, and the truth, 
as it is seen by God, is that truth which I do pray to be known of those 
causes, events, and results. My friends, such a war can not be ig- 
nored ; its lessons will be learned by mankind; its voice has reverber- 
ated through all the worid; its heroes have entered into the temple of 
immortality, and the sole question for us to determine is, whether those 
lessons shall be in accordance with the truth, that voice sound the 
truth or a lie, those heroes receive the places to which they are justly 
entitled ? 

It is a glorious history, though a sad one. It can not be written 
justly as yet, but the material for it can be gathered now, and only 
now. Soon it will be too late; and to-day, standing by these graves, 
in the name of the dead, I demand of every one who participated in 
that war to do his and her part in this great work, and he who fails to 
do it will be held negligent of his duty and forgetful of his dead com- 
rades. This history necessarily includes a complete and philosophical 
history of our American Liberty and Constitution, and of the causes 
which produced the secession of the States. And in this part of our 
answer to the charge brought against us at the bar of public opinion 



8 A Plea for a History of the Confederate War. 

and of posterity, every lover of liberty and every hope of freedom are 
interested. On this day, and in this presence, I content myself with 
the solemn avowal that the cause for which the South fought was that 
of personal liberty. State sovereignty, and national independence, and 
to add that liberty in a republic of States can be preserved only on 
the principle on which the American Union, as constituted before that 
war, and the Confederacy were founded ; that unless those principles 
become dominant, centralization, which is depotism, or disintegration 
is absolutely certain. Our defense, therefore, is a plea for republican 
liberty — a defense of a union of equal States — a demonstration that 
man may be free under a government strong enough to protect his 
freedom and pure enough to command his love. 

It will be a defense of our revolutionary forefathers and of the 
government they established, under which for three quarters of a cen- 
tury liberty was protected, and peace and prosperity dwelt among us. 
It will establish our hereditary claim to this constitutional freedom, and 
our fidelity alike to the teachings and to the example of our sires, and 
to demonstrate that the sons who fell at Manassas and in front of 
Richmond were equal to the sires who froze at Valley Forge and con- 
quered at Yorktown. It will be another proof that forms of govern- 
ment may be a deception, and that liberty was in danger — even in 
temples erected to her honor and at altars where priests minister in 
her name. 

And then, when our historian unfolds the rolls on which are written 
the deeds and sacrifices of those who loved constitutional liberty, 
this liberty regulated by law and guarded by sovereign States com- 
pacted into a great confederacy, what a touching, noble, and im- 
mortal story will entrance the world. Sad, but glorious four years ! 
My tongue can not utter the proper requiem for the dead of those 
years, for the martyrs who died in defeat, for the women who gave 
their all to this conquered country. Have the story told in its simple 
and naked truthfulness, and stand silent as the world listens; tears 
will run down your cheeks, grief will ring your hearts, anguish may 
pale your faces, but never a blush will flush them. We will have no 
cause to hang our heads nor hide our eyes, and our heroes can stand 
covered in any presence. As another has said, "When written his- 
tory shall truly record the .struggle which ended thus, every leaf may 
be dripping with the tears of grief and woe, but not a page will be 
stained with a stigma of shame." 

The military part of this story— the narrative of campaign, march, 



A Plea for a History of the Confederate War. 9 

and encampment; of battle, charge, retreat, and victory; of hair- 
breadth escapes; of dashing assault and sturdy resistance; of raid by 
night and risk by day; of splendid courage and nobler sacrifice; of 
uncomplaining endurance and heroic death; of the unutterable agony 
of hospital and prison ; and all the incidents of war — will be full of 
glory and add bright pages to all that is told of man and his achieve- 
ments. And, as we merely utter the names of our military chieftains, 
with Lee and the Johnstons, Jackson and the Hills, and their com- 
rades so numerous and so knightly, we can anticipate the judgment 
of the world as to the courage, skill, and chivalry of those devoted 
armies whose graves are scattered over the entire country. 

But when the more obscure story of how this Confederacy was 
organized, these armies were raised, clothed, armed, fed, and trans- 
ported, this war protracted and civil law made dominant, and personal 
freedom protected, is fully told, another and exceedingly glorious 
wreath will be added to our crown, and we confidently predict that it 
will be held that all that man could do, all that was possible to be 
done, was well done; that the result was inevitable. 

And then when to this is added some just representation of what was 
done and what was suffered by the women and children of the South — 
the industry, energy, courage, sacrifices, self-deprivations, the endur- 
ance which were shown by every one during those four years — all 
that matron and virgin and martyr have ever received a crown for in 
the ages behind us, will be found equaled, if not surpassed, by the 
Christ-like women of the South. 

I thank God that I lived in the same generation with such women, 
and was an actor in the same transactions with them. To have known 
and lived and acted with such gives a kind of immortality. " He was 
at Waterloo" was a diploma of nobility. How much greater, " He was 
the friend of the matrons of the South." "He was the son of her 
who gave her all." I know of one matron who gave six sons and two 
sons-in-law — all she had ; and she was but a type of all her sex. To 
be her son is greater honor than to be conqueror. 

All that could be done, all that could be suffered, was done with 
the matchless power of woman's love ; suffered with the saintly de- 
meanor of woman!s meekness. 

It may be too soon yet to estimate the results of that war. But it 
is a necessary portion of our answer to set forth in measured but 
candid form the events following the surrender and dissolution of the 
Confederate armies, and to ascertain as best we can what were and 



lo A Flea for a History of the Confederate War. 

are the legitimate effect and results of that war; the effect on the 
States which formed the Confederacy, on the States which conquered 
that Confederacy, and on the reunited republic, and on liberty. The 
judgment of posterity on the wisdom of our course will in part depend 
on this very portion of our answer. The world has already accepted 
among its heroes and loved ones the chiefs of our armies and crowned 
with immortelles our women and private soldiers. But it suspends 
judgment on our civil leaders and on the justice of our cause and the 
necessity of our war. I have already pointed out my conception of 
the necessity of a full history of our American institutions and politics 
to a just understanding of the justice of our war, and now I desire to 
add that an equally full and severely just narration of what followed 
that war, and a wise and philosophical estimate of its results, are also 
due from us as a vindication for the costly treasures and desperate 
ventures risked by us in that great struggle. And this would be a 
most valuable contribution to the needs and perils of the future ; for 
we are not the last of our race, and dangers to liberty and free gov- 
ernment lie in wait for our children. 

It is that this history be written that I plead to-day. If I know 
my own heart, it is the truth I desire written; no glosses, no attempt 
to palliate, to excuse, or to explain. Let the world and our children 
know the truth. We were but men, and our children will be but men. 
We were not saints nor angels, nor our adversaries devils. If in the 
midst of so great perils, with so much at stake, with such enemies at 
our throats, with hosts of loved ones in our care, aught was done 
which ought not to have been done, tell it out manfully, so that he 
who is innocent may not be blamed with the guilty, and so that our 
children, while they emulate our virtues, may avoid our errors. So, 
too, on the other hand, let us be careful to tell the truth of those who 
conquered our armies, setting down naught in malice, so that all that 
was manly, heroic, and generous may be remembered and cherished. 
Such a history will be our best legacy to posterity ; and the blood 
of our martyrs will indeed be the precious seed of the church. He 
who has striven to discover the true secret of human history is often 
confused with the martyrdoms that seem to be in vain. Human 
hearts lie thickly strewn along the pathway of time, and brutal heels 
stain themselves with richest blood as they stride unfeelingly to power 
and place. The scaffold and dungeon, the rack and stake, the battle- 
field and hospital, confuse the earnest student, who loves God and 
man, and he can not unravel the riddle why such costly sacrifices 



A Plea for a History of the Confederate War. 1 1 

should be in vain. The mockings and scfcurgings, the bonds and im- 
prisonments, the sawings asunder, the stonings, the hidings in dens 
and caves, the beheadings and burnings, with which our human 
annals are tarnished and yet glorified, are the mysteries of God's 
dealing with man. But this we know, that the loftiest of mankind, 
the most divine of mortals, have been the martyrs, whose blood has 
enriched the world, and from whose graves the most precious harvest 
has been gathered ; that the seed sown with tears will be reaped with 
rejoicings, and as we recall the martyrs of all the past and gaze en- 
chanted on the long and shining host, we can lift up our hearts as our 
martyred dead shine in those glorified ranks. How many have we 
given of every age and sex and condition ? There is a boy scarcely 
fifteen ; see his fair hair and blue eyes ; his heart was pierced as he 
planted the pennon of Picket's division on the heights of Gettysburg. 
There, a youth in the full vigor of young manhood; he fellas Breckin- 
ridge sullenly retreated from Shiloh. Oh! mother, was he your son? 
God bind up your broken heart! He waits for you on the other side 
of the river under the shade of the trees where Stonewall Jackson 
rests. And there, erect and calm, rides Sidney Johnston, whose 
smile death respects, and whose heart was as pure as the flowers 
which sprang from his blood. And these gray hairs, all bedabbled 
with blood and oozing brain, crowned an old man who came from the 
mountain home in Virginia after all the sons had fallen, and entering 
the reserves, fell as he beat back the last charge at the Salt-works; 
and to-day in that desolate mountain home waits a motherless widow 
for the tardy summons to complete the heavenly group. 

And this is the " gallant boy Pelham," and this Stuart; and these 
without arms the victims of prison and hospital ; and these the mur- 
dered by the pretense of military commission and martial law ; and 
these the broken-hearted, whom God mercifully led through the valley 
of the shadow of death to join the beloved. 

Who is this with drooping plume but lifted head ; knightliest of 
the knightly dead? It is our own Morgan, and with him and around 
him those we loved. Near by are Hanson and Monroe and John- 
son, and — I can not see, my comrades, for these are those I loved, 
and tears blind the eyes. Mothers of Kentucky, these are your sons; 
widows, your husbands; djughters, your fathers. Above us and 
around us these spirits sanctify this day's work. As you bend over 
to place the flowers on these graves, loved spirits bend over you and 
hallow the work. Let us receive the blessing and take it into our 



12 A Flea for a History of the Confederate War. 

hearts and resolve to love the right, cherish the truth, be ready to die 
for liberty, even as these loved ones did. 

To the women of the South no words of mine can give honor. 
There they stand at the bar of human history, clad in the scant habili- 
ments of mourning, holding by the hand these traitors, and, lifting 
their faces upward, proclaim that they are their sons and fathers and 
husbands, and that whatever of guilt has been incurred is a common 
guilt, and that for this treason home and comfort and heart have been 
cheerfully sacrificed. 

Young maidens ! go sit by the feet of some Southern matron and 
listen as she tells you all of the sacrifices of these four years, and yet 
how God gave her courage and strength to bear it all, and then to live 
the life of perfect womanhood. 

Six and twenty centuries ago the Messianic Prophet, looking down 
the entire course of time, said to every loving, sorrowing heart, "Thy 
dead shall live . . . Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust ; for thy 
dew is the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead," and 
to-day on this exquisite spring afternoon, standing at the head of these 
graves, I re-echo this ancient prophecy. Take it in all its significance. 
Our dead live — live in their heroic courage, in their tender manhood, 
in their noble devotion, in their absolute self-sacrifice, in their death- 
less love of liberty, in their quenchless hatred of wrong. They are 
our dead, and their honor is our honor, their defense our defense, 
their graves our care. So year by year we will honor their graves 
and teach our children to honor their Uves and deaths and memory. 
We will hold their fame dear to our hearts ; we will leave to our chil- 
dren the priceless heritage of their glory; we will strive to perpetuate 
and make universal that liberty for which they died. We bury in 
their graves all implacability, but we renew in this sacred place and 
this august and awful presence our solemn profession that we love lib- 
erty beyond all earthly treasures, and that we will honor those who 
died in her defense. 

And as we recall the immortality accorded to these loved ones, we 
arise and sing in the joy of that certain reunion with them which the 
future has in store. 




^^^^ 



THE CONFEDERATE MONUMENT AT HOPKINSVILLE. 



WHO WERE 



The Confederate Dead? 



ADDRESS 



AT THE UNVEILING CEREMONIES OF THE CONFEDERATE MON- 
UMENT AT HOPKINSVILLE, KENTUCKY, 
MAY 19, 1887. 



WM. C. P. BRECKINRIDGE. 




JOHN C. LATHAM, JR. 



ADDRESS. 



My Countrymen : 

Who were these men, over whom this stately memorial with its 
admiring inscriptions and loving praise has been erected? Here lie 
loi dead, of whom this silent but imposing witness testifies that in 
their graves "is buried all of heroism that can die;" concerning 
whom it is engraved on granite " that while martyrs for conscience 
sake are respected, their valor and devotion will be admired by the' 
good and the brave ; " whose very dust it is averred in enduring stone 
is " sacred dust," and yet they are " unknown" men. As we study 
these inscriptions in our endeavor to understand why this monument 
was erected and this vast crowd has assembled to do honor to these 
" unknown " dead, we read, " Confederate Dead ; " " belonging to 
the I St Mississippi Regiment, 3d Mississippi Regiment, 7th Texas, 
8th Kentucky, Forrest's Cavalry, Woodward's Kentucky Cavalry, 
Green's Kentucky Battery ; " and that this monument is erected at 
the place of his birth by a surviving comrade " to commemorate the 
virtue of the Confederate Dead." 

This then is the cause and this the defense of this monument and 
of this ceremonial; a Confederate whom God has prospered thinks 
it an honor to his native town to make it the perpetual witness to the 
honor of the Confederate Dead, and this great crowd of freemen, 
gathered from so many sections; these reverend and distinguished 
guests ; these venerable fathers, and this throng of fair women, by 
their presence approve the generous act. And is it so, that on the 
bosom of this beloved Commonwealth, in one of tfie fairest sections 
of this Imperial Republic, fathers and mothers approvingly testify to 
that new and splendid generation which is pushing us off our seats of 
power that it is a praiseworthy deed to do honor to the memory of 
the Confederate Dead? Let us not to-day disguise this question to 
our hearts or consciences ; we must answer it at the bar of " Posterity," 
and submit to the verdict that the august tribunal of its enlightened 
public opinion will then render. When this generation has finally 

2 



t8 IV/fO Were the Confederate Dead? 

passed away, and its deeds are weighed by those who will be our 
judges, be assured that we will receive some judgment for this scene 
and its evident meaning. 

Those judges will repeat my question, Who were the Confederate 
Dead that to them such honor should be paid ? 

How joyously can these queries be partly answered — they were 
soldiers and heroes ! 

A peaceful and pastoral people, suddenly called to war, found 
themselves without arms, without ships, without factories where any 
part of a warlike arm or its ammunition could be made, without an 
army, without a treasury, and without a government. They were 
five millions of free whites with a black slave population of four 
millions in their midst. Confronted by twenty millions of the most 
warlike people in the world, bone of their bone, rich in every mate- 
rial, with the trained nucleus of a superb army, with unlimited credit 
and unparalleled resources, an equipped navy and an old government; 
this pastoral people organized an army larger in the aggregate than 
the whole number of its adult free males; captured in the main its 
arms and military supplies, improvised a government, and for four 
years faced armies which in number, equipment, resources, and facili- 
ties the world had never seen equaled. 

During these four years in this terrific and unequal strife these dead 
had fallen. They had come from the i)low and the desk, the plane 
and the office, the beautiful valley farm and the outstretching planta- 
tion, of every age and rank and vocation, and given their lives, all 
they had, to this unparalleled struggle. Heroes, indeed, were they^ 
who fell where Sidney Johnston died, who crowned Jackson with 
immortality, followed Lee with intelligent faith, made Chickamauga 
run red with fraternal blood, rode with Morgan, shared in the victo- 
ries of Forrest, died on picket post, or went to God from prison bunk 
or scaffold. 

With scant rations and scanter clothing, with inferior numbers, 
always relatively decreasing, with the circle of their ever-increasing 
foes narrowing upon them, homes lost to many, their lands devastated 
by the severest rigors of internecine war, with wondrous victories 
bearing no fruit, with loved ones homeless and dependent on the 
straitened for daily bread, with a future all dark and uncertain, these 
men never faltered — they died. And to those distant queries we can 
proudly answer : these men were heroes. 

But is this all the answer we can make at that illustrious bar? Who 



Who Were the Confederate Dead? 19 

were these Confederates? They were American citizens of the South- 
ern States of the American Republic. 

That great Teutonic race which set limits to the growth of the 
Roman Empire had worked out a noble development in the British 
Isles. There is a fixed though obscure relation between a people and 
its institutions, and a certain though often imperceptible progress in 
the development of each, and they mutually affect each other. Noble 
races unconsciously develop noble institutions, noble institutions pro- 
duce noble races, and this upward growth must be difficult, slow, and, 
alas ! has always been bloody ; and out of these conflicts emerge a 
better people and wider institutions. 

In the narrow horizon of the present the actors may fail to com- 
prehend the true significance of their own part in the ever-moving 
drama of human growth. There' is an eternal "needs be" in this 
progression. And as in the material universe around us, harvests 
must be preceded by clouds and storms and rains; there must be 
cyclones and tornadoes, with winter and> ice and sleet ; so, too, in 
this world of moral forces, where subtler forces dominate and invisi- 
ble influences control, there must be storms. It has always been so. 
The rich lands, where liberty grows strongest and man is freest, have 
been sanctified with human blood and made fertile with broken hearts. 

And for seven centuries this race from which we sprang had grown 
from soil the richest under the stars with the blood of martyrs and 
heroes. The luminous track of British history shines resplendent 
with the reddest blood, and the most precious mile-stones which indi- 
cate the progress of our ancestors are the scaffolds where the martyrs 
died, or the poles on which the severed heads of the traitors were 
lifted up. 

Amid such traditions, with such schoolmasters, each generation nec- 
essarily held more tenaciously to what had been gained and yearned 
more intensely to wrest from power what was still denied. 

And so from age to age, every age having its own " Lost Cause " 
and meeting apparently its fatal repulse, the ceaseless struggle went 
on with constant success. The conquering Norman gradually became 
Englishmen, the parliament became free, even though the dead Crom- 
well hang in chains and " Charles came to his own." The colonist 
brought here with him certain rights, but much more he was a Briton 
freeman. He was as much the product of these ages and these strug- 
gles as the institutions of which he was inheritor. And so here the 
development continued. 



20 IV/io Were the Confederate Dead? 

He who subdued this new and dangerous continent — felled its 
forests, drove inward its savage denizens, builded homes in its almost 
illimitable spaces, laid in its virgin soil the foundation of a new em- 
pire — unconsciously grew into a nobler manhood and stronger nature. 
He did not become a new man. The present springs out of the bosom 
of the past; and the prepotency of blood ever dominates the race. 
We are born in our own family without option on our own part, and 
our growth is in an ordained path within certain prescribed limita- 
tions. But it is real growth, true development. These colonists were 
British, not French nor Spaniard; and this one fact, this controlling 
fact, determined the line of development. 

These colonists brought with them inherent, inalienable rights as 
men ; immemorial and constitutional rights as Britons ; chartered 
rights as colonists under royal grants or charters; and they grew 
with their new life into larger desires; the colonies became States, the 
colonists American citizens. Thus came into being American insti- 
tutions. 

Man is in one sense the same every where and in all ages. This is 
indeed a most precious as well as pregnant truth : we are of one race — 
a race of brothers, with one Father ! 

The brotherhood of man, with its correlative truth, the father- 
hood of God, is at the foundation of all true thinking, is the primal 
truth in all valuable philosophy and is the corner-stone of every 
stable human edifice. We can not have at heart this truth too earn- 
estly, nor hold it too tenaciously, for error here is irretrievable disas- 
ter. On this rock are founded our institutions. 

It is this MAN, who, created by God in his own likeness, is by 
nature free, and is by development capable of self-government; and, 
as he is free and capable of self-government, it follows irresistibly that 
all governments to be free must rest on the consent of the governed. 
And, as the government is formed by freemen, they have the unal- 
terable right, each generation for itself, to modify, amend, or change 
their government. These were the universal truths which these colo- 
nists held as applicable not to themselves only, but to all mankind. 
Not that at any given day, under every possible circumstance, every 
race was thus capable, but that they actually were, and all potentially 
were. 

But they held with equal intensity that liberty was possible only 
with order, that order which springs from and is preserved by con- 
stituted authority. They were reverent to law, because, with sim- 



Who Were the Confederate Dead ? 21 

plicity of faith to them the Father was the law-giver ; and generation 
after generation, living with habitual belief in His power and cus- 
tomary obedience to the religion founded in His name, this race was 
daily transformed into the most orderly, and therefore the most con- 
structive race the world has ever seen. By its very law of develop- 
ment, this English-speaking race is a law-giving and a law-abiding 
race ; an unconscious power of social organization belongs to it, and 
is always exercised by it. 

There is no camp in which this tongue is spoken where order does 
not reign and a form of constituted authority is not established ; no 
body of this people ever knew chaos, nor fell victim to anarchy. The 
benign and dominant influence of ever-present law has shed upon 
this people fructifying power. As under summer sun lofty trees 
grow, sending roots down into the bowels of the earth, and pushing 
branches skyward, so under this steady heat has this favored race 
grown stronger and nobler. 

Thus free and law-loving, these colonists were separated into thir- 
teen independent States when the problem of forming their govern- 
ment was by destiny presented to them. 

By the " needs be " of their position there was narrow choice 
given. They could construct only with the material they had on 
hand thirteen States of English-speaking people, and these states 
with definite form and ascertained powers. 

Governmental forms and governmental powers are not numerous, 
nor in thought very complex j nor are either arbitrary; to them not 
much can be added, nor much subtracted. The form of our State 
governments had through the years been slowly evolved to fit the 
nature of governmental functions, which are divisible into only three 
classes, the law-making, the law-declaring, and the law-executing func- 
tions. 

Society organized into government can make law — that is, legislate; 
declare what the law is, adjudicate; enforce the law, execute. Once 
all these functions were exercised by one body of magistracy, often 
by a single person ; gradually the magistracies became separate, the 
law-making department becoming a parliament, the law-declaring an 
independent judiciary, the law executing the executive. This was 
the form in the main in which our colonial governments were when 
we won our independence. And as all powers exercised by either of 
these departments are delegated powers, delegated in thought by the 
people constituting that organism we call a " State," and as the officers 



2 2 JV/to Were tilt Confederate Dead? 

required to discharge the duties thus imposed by the State are repre- 
sentatives of the sovereign power residing in the body of the people, 
some mode of defining, prescribing, and limiting these powers, and of 
selecting these public servants had to be agreed upon. But in the 
main this had also been the growth of years; legislative bodies chosen 
by suffrage ; executives directly or indirectly so chosen ; judges selected 
by the executives and confirmed by some selected representative body. 
So the task of adapting a government of the State to the new and freer 
order was not very difficult, and the mistakes were easily remedied 
and were not fatal. And in every constitution was inserted the fun- 
damental conception that those powers were granted powers; that 
this government found its only warrant in the consent of the gov- 
erned, and the power of alteration was expressly reserved. 

These written constitutions were a new contribution by America 
to political science and to the muniments of freedom. 

They have been confounded with such acts as the Magna Charta, 
as royal charters by king or emperor, as the Bill of Rights by Parlia- 
ment. They are generically and radically different. 

The Magna Charta is a solemn claim by English barons of what 
were English liberties, and a solemn acknowledgment by king that 
the claim was well founded and should be respected. Royal charters 
and grants were gracious privileges or franchises, or gifts from a sov- 
ereign of his own will to subjects. Bills of Rights by Parliament 
were legislative declarations of the existing political rights. But these 
American constitutions are the solemn act of the sovereign people 
establishing a form of government, delegating to its officers the pre- 
scribed powers, limiting the modes of their exercise, ordering the 
mode of selection and tenure of office, and placing on itself the 
agreed limitations. They were without precedent in history and 
without parallel. 

Grave questions arose when these independent States came to form 
a permanent union. They were independent States, but in a certain 
sense they had always been one people. They had been British sub- 
jects, and while colonists they owed allegiance to the same crown 
and were one people. While as colonies they revolted, it was as colo- 
nies in one Continental Congress, by one act of sovereignty, the thir- 
teen colonies in one body, in one act and conjointly, declared their 
independence and formed a new government founded on the consent 
of the governed. As one people they fought that revolutionary war, 
and as one people they secured national independence ; thirteen sov- 
ereign States constituting the United States of America. 



IV/io Were the Confederate Dead? ■ 23 

The people spoke the same language, had inherited the same tradi- 
tions, fought a common fight for a common freedom, and formed a 
Union recognized as an independent nation. 

Our fathers saw, perhaps more clearly than we, the line of demark- 
ation between internal and external affairs, and, as to internal affairs, 
between local and national subjects. 

It must be remembered that in the aggregate the powers of all 
nations are precisely the same ; the difference is in the powers granted 
and in the distribution of these powers. It must also be remembered 
that in this government there can be no hostile powers; all powers 
must be held to be always capable of simultaneous and harmonious 
exercise, and that the Federal Government and the States must be 
held to have jointly all the powers necessary for self-preservation. 

There were certain purposes that our fathers had concerning which 
there can be no doubt. The first was to preserve the Jiberty of the 
citizens; this is the very cause of the formation of all governments by 
the free. Then to preserve the integrity and independence of the 
States. To accomplish these purposes it was necessary that there 
should be strength, power, wealth ; and to secure these there must be 
union, such union as secured to each the power of all, and freed each 
from danger of offense by any American State. So that the problem 
was, how can these thirteen States of one people be so united as to 
preserve the liberty of the citizen and the integrity of the State, secure 
the country from foreign foe, and each State from attack from ambi- 
tious American States, and guarantee the quickest and most solid 
growth in power and wealth ? 

The Federal Constitution is the answer our fathers gave to that 
problem, and an immortal answer they made. It was a compromise, 
and must be construed as a compromise. There were numerous inci- 
dental but grave questions. It was an immense territory for which 
they were legislating. Climatic and other influences were variant, and 
these differences would become more complicated as the wealth in- 
volved grew greater and the interests vastly increased. 

Power amplifies itself; and in government, as in nature, the cen- 
trifugal ceaselessly resists the centripetal forces. 

On an evil day a cargo of Africans were sold into slavery, then 
universally recognized as legal and humane. For the individual slavery 
of the black was held to be a distinct conception from the political 
freedom of the citizen and the national independence of a country. 
Other cargoes came. The prolific and docile race increased rapidly 



24 " IV//0 Were the Confederate Dead? 

in number and more rapidly in value. In a new country labor is 
most valuable. When new land is to be reduced to tillage and its 
value is enormously increased by the mere act of preparing it for a 
home and tillage, disciplined and controlled. labor is extremely valu- 
able. For climatic and economical reasons these slaves were gener- 
ally concentrated within the Southern- States by purchase, and that 
purchase mainly from citizens of the Northern States. These slaves 
were black, and there is no people with such race prejudices as this 
English-speaking race. They hold tenaciously to the belief that man 
is of one race; but they have held their own blood pure from all inter- 
mixture with the colored races. There has been revealed no stronger 
nor more intense passion than this pass\_on for race purity by this col- 
onizing and dominating people. Neither in Asia, nor Africa, nor 
America has it consented to either marital intermixture or political 
partnership with any other than a white race. But while this was true, 
it was also true that slavery became one of the institutions of these 
Southern States. Slavery did represent so much money; but it repre- 
sented very much more. It became interwoven into the social fabric 
of the State in a way hard now to explain. It undoubtedly influenced 
the civilization and development of those States. It dignified color so 
that to be a white man was a tie that every other white man recog- 
nized. It made race and color, not condition and wealth the distinc- 
tion. It gave habits of domination and caused a form of pastoral life 
that was peculiar and influential. If the slave had been white the 
problem had been easy of solution; had the number been small, there 
could have been found an easy remedy ; had the number actually in 
America been evenly distributed through all the States there would 
have been no danger ; however, it had to be managed as it was, and 
one of the compromises of the Constitution was concerning this insti- 
tution. When that Constitution went into effect, and the first Congress 
thereunder organized, the experiment of American liberty was fairly 
commenced. 

These institutions were indeed noble! Religious liberty was se- 
cured by every conceivable guarantee ; the destruction of the law of 
primogeniture gave promise of preventing permanent classifications 
based on wealth; the exact division of governmental functions into 
three separate departments protected from arbitrary encroachments, 
and by checks and balances assured the preservation of each in its 
proper vigor; the integrity and autonomy of the States and their ex- 
clusive dominion over all domestic institutions insured the personal 



PV/io Were the Confederate Dead? 25 

liberty of the citizen and guarded the local interests and industries of 
each section; the united power of all, acting through the Federal Gov- 
ernment, protected from foreign interference and gave promise of 
fliture acquisition. It was a system capable of indefinite expansion, 
perfect for the union of two States, fit for the union of a hundred 
States. These institutions were instinct with the pervasive spirit of 
freedom, and were fitted to occupy, develop, and enrich any territory 
that she might acquire. Strict adherence to the spirit and letter of 
these covenants contained in the constitutions, just impartiality under 
their equal provisions, faithful obedience to the prescribed limitations, 
were the only conditions to illimitable growth. For the arena upon 
which this experiment was to be tried was worthy alike of the race and 
the institutions. 

A virgin continent of indescribable beauty and wealth awaited our 
conquest. A soil of inexhaustible fertility, producing under various 
climates and intelligent culture every form of product; minerals, in 
extent boundless and for uses innumerable, buried in every section ; 
with mighty lakes and noble rivers, and accessible valleys furnishing 
easy transportation ; salubrious climates for every condition of human 
health and development; a coast line which must ultimately give con- 
trol of the seas; — were to be ours almost for the asking. 

Such a continent never wooed such a race to make it mighty under 
the sway of such institutions. Day by day the wondrous growth went 
on. The tide poured over the top of the Appalachian Mountains, 
down its western slopes, and on the bosom of this beloved Common- 
wealth was built the first American State of the new republic, with man- 
hood suffrage, representation based on numbers, and the strict con- 
struction of the articles of compact, which we call the Constitution. 

These exquisite landscapes and ravishing scenes tempted immigra- 
tion. The Northwest became States; the Southwest grew into power. 
We crossed the Mississippi, acquired the Floridas, won Texas to our 
embrace, and purchased with blood and money to the shores of the 
placid Pacific. 

But land was not all of our conquests. We won the hearts of the 
poor over the world by our offer of ample homes and freedom for them 
and their children. Every day those seeking homes landed on our 
shores and put their lives and hopes into our destiny. 

With unequal strides the North and the South grew. The "South," 
comprising the fifteen States of Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, Ken- 
tucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, 



2 6 W/io Were the Confederate Dead ? 

Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas, had 
increased absolutely with immense strides, but relatively they had not 
kept pace with the North and the Northwest ; and it had been found that 
the institution of slavery could be confined within the limits of those 
States. That institution was protected by the provisions of the Con- 
stitution, and by the sovereignty of each State, if that sovereignty was 
recognized and could be maintained. Those States were in the main 
agricultural; in religion, believing; in life, simple; in manners, cor- 
dial. 

The South was very sparsely populated, with no large cities, with 
no great centers of trade and factory, and comparatively few lines of 
transportation, save in rivers. Almost purely agricultural, and with a 
genial climate, her increase in wealth was almost altogether in open- 
ing for cultivation new lands and increasing the area of tillage ; and 
this required more than her accumulated capital. She had neither the 
means nor the temptation to embark in other enterprises. Her men 
of wealth were rich only in land and slaves, and were, by the neces- 
sity of their condition, required to give constant, careful, and personal 
superintendence to this continual process of development. It was 
always a new country, even in its oldest settlements. Stable in its in- 
stitutions, conservative in its mode of thought, self-contained in its 
habits of life, it was a severely simple, plain, and frugal people. The 
men, living in the open air, expert in horsemanship and the use of 
arms, having upon them the responsibilities of mastership with its 
consequent habit of control and dignity of manner, were physically 
among the finest who have ever been called to act in public affairs 
or take part in war. Proud of their lineage, not because of its wealth 
but of its sacrifices for liberty and its achievements for humanity; 
tenacious of their political rights, because both of their familiarity 
with history and their knowledge that it is the admitted claim which 
seems small that becomes the precedent for despotism, and because 
of this institution of slavery which could not be touched from the out- 
side without danger; deeply read in political science, and intensely 
provincial because safety to them required that their own local affairs 
should be exclusively in their control in a sense far beyond what is 
usually understood by the common phrase of local self-government; 
without the habit of co-operation, as their life and peculiar occupation 
developed individuality, they were of the highest integrity, the loftiest 
purity, and fit for great public duties ; but prone to schism, not patient 
of opposition, and inflexible in the advocacy of their own views. 



IV/io Were the Confederate Dead? 27 

Like all provincial people they were devoted to their own homes, 
their own States, their own sections, with a passionate love which no 
language can exaggerate. 

The great Appalachian range which runs through the States of Vir- 
ginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, 
and Alabama, with its lofty peaks, its indescribable valleys and its 
ravishing landscapes; the many noble rivers which traverse fertile sec- 
tions and were fringed with hoar cotton and tasseled corn; the long 
ocean line with its ceaseless melody and ever-changing beauty; the 
land-locked Chesapeake and the rich Gulf of Mexico; the forests of 
stately pines, of magnificent oaks, or other equally mighty rivals of the 
forest; the varied products of field or garden; and in these fields the 
blooded horse or short-horn cattle, made a land physically worthy of 
such love. And it was sacred in its hallowed spots. Here, on the 
beautiful Potomac, is the tomb of Washington; in sight of the Chesa- 
peake is the Yorktown where Cornwallis surrendered ; here is the 
grave of Jefferson; this is the place where Ferguson died as the 
mountaineers scaled King's Mountain; here Marion hid until like the 
hawk he would dart upon his prey ; this is where Boone and the pio- 
neers began the conquest of the West; and here stood Jackson when 
the British failed at New Orleans. 

The sweet memories of the land were still dearer. The plain 
churches which dotted every neighborhood were surrounded by be- 
loved dead ; the simple homes had always been the abode of stainless 
purity and a patriarchal type of domestic economy as loving as it was 
pure. 

And in that land, if the question of the wise king had been asked, 
" Who can find a virtuous woman?" with trusting pride each of those 
homes could answer, " Under this precious roof-tree, by this beloved 
hearth-stone," and the loving hearts made pure by her sweet life would 
add, "her price is far above rubies; the heart of her husband doth 
safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do 
him good and not evil all the days of her life. She seeketh wool and 
flax and worketh willingly with her hands; . . . she riseth also while 
it is yet night and giveth meat to her household and a portion to her 
maidens; . . . she layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands 
hold the distaff. She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she 
reacheth forth her hands to the needy. . . . Her husband is known 
in the gates when he sitteth among the elders of the land. She mak- 
eth fine linen and selleth it; . . . strength and honor are her cloth- 



28 JVAo Were the Confederate Dead? 

ing and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth her mouth 
in wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh 
well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness. 
Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband, also, and he 
praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest 
them all." 

And in these homes dwelt maidens who, like Esther, were " fair 
and beautiful," as "beautiful and well favored" as Rachel; yea, 
"very fair to look upon" even as Rebecca; as devoted as the daugh- 
ter of Jeptha. 

Who in this vast crowd can not recall with tearful eyes, but unuttera- 
ble pride, the Southern mother who taught him of God, and the lovely 
sister who made home full of happiness; whose remembered linea- 
ments are well described by these inspired words? 

In these States were born ; from these people sprang ; under these 
institutions were fostered ; amid such scenes grew up these Confed- 
erate Dead. They were the descendants of the men who made Eng- 
land a commonwealth, preserved the freedom of Scotland, ceaselessly 
protested against the servitude of Ireland ; their sires had colonized 
America, conquered the French at Quebec, driven the Indian inward; 
their grandfathers sat in the Continental Congress, served with Wash- . 
ington, conquered at King's Mountain; their fathers were with Perry 
at Erie or with Jackson at New Orleans; their elder brothers fell at 
Buena Vista, or received the surrender at Mexico. 

They sprang from the loins of those who in two generations pushed 
the limits of the Republic to the Pacific. 

The Confederate armies were equal to their ancestors; with equal 
courage, and perhaps greater skill, they faced more tremendous odds, 
and had a sadder fortune. Who can adequately represent in language 
that host and the four years of its struggles and sacrifices? 

In the long and glorious processsion of armies which have been 
used by the subtle forces which raise and move armies in the develop- 
ment of man, none need be ashamed of the companionship of these 
defeated and surrendered men. We can with proud confidence leave 
their glory to history and trust their deeds to fame ; and as the story 
of those years is more accurately told, as the cost of their defeat is 
more fully understood, and their achievements better known, all who 
love heroic virtues and are inspired with lofty purposes will revere the 
memories of that immortal array. 

These loi unknown dead constituted a part of that illustrious army. 



IV/w Were the Confederate Dead? 29 

and bore their full share in its labors and dangers. Obscure, perhaps, 
in the simple vocations of peaceful life, they followed where duty led 
and died where honor ordered, and reverently but proudly we dedicate 
this memorial to these heroes who lie here, and to all their comrades 
wherever they rest waiting for the resurrection morning; and then we 
lift up our faces with inexpressible pride and claim these men as our 
comrades, and challenge that questioning posterity in its day of peril 
and disaster to match them. 

But this is not full answer to that dista,nt challenge, nor has this 
alone called us here in this sweet springtime. 

These dead were not from the same State ; this monument reveals 
that they were from Texas,- Mississippi, Tennessee (for Forrest's cav- 
alry was a Tennessee battalion originally, and Woodward's Kentucky 
cavalry had Tennessee companies in it), and Kentucky. 

It has been the common fashion of the historian to speak of " the 
South " as if it were one organic section, bound together as a compact 
whole ; and of the late secession as if it was one act, based on the same 
causes and justified by the same reasons. These are in part erroneous. 
The fifteen slave States constituting the political " South " were bound 
together by that institution and its common dangers ; and the claim 
that there resided in the Federal Government any power over that in- 
stitution, except honestly to obey the Federal Constitution and loyally 
abide in fidelity of spirit by its guarantees, tended to consolidate and 
compact those States. Such claim was held to be destructive to the 
equality of the States as well as to their sovereignty ; to lead to des- 
potism and the obliteration of the distinction between Federal and State 
power. Such a claim involved the whole relation of the citizen to the 
State, and of the State to the Federal Government. The very claim 
asserted supreme power in the Federal Government over the property 
and institutions of the States, and that there resided power to be ex- 
ercised in some mode by the Federal Government, or by a certain ma- 
jority of the States, to force the other States to conform their domestic 
institutions to the religion or charity or opinions of the majority. The 
world had never seen the experiment of confederation made perma- 
nently successful in nations of great extent or power. Consolidation 
or disintegration had been the result, with war, misery, and loss of 
power. We were renewing the experiment under the most favorable 
circumstances, but with some dangerous elements. The very differ- 
ence in climate, and therefore in products and industry, necessarily 
gave rise to economic differences which were, perhaps, hardly recon- 



30 JV/i(? IVere the Confederate Dead? 

cilable; and the immense pecuniary interests involved rendered it 
certain that every effort would be made to amplify the powers of the 
Government so that they could be used in this economic struggle. 

Without slavery such differences would have been fierce, were in- 
deed bitter. Unfortunately the slave line ran not precisely parallel 
with, but nearly so, with the line of division on those economic ques- 
tions. The purely planting interest, that form of agricultural in- 
dustry which produces in large tracts of land a single product, on 
whose sale elsewhere all profit depends, necessarily becomes restive 
under any commercial restrictions. It must buy away from its imme- 
diate section every thing but its one product, and must sell that where 
best it can to be able to buy and have a surplus. And to a system 
which required them to pay an enormous tribute to a distant people, 
to whom they are unfamiliar, even if fellow-citizens, under a Union 
and by the operation of a Constitution formed for the equal and im- 
partial good of all, necessarily forced them to scan that Constitution 
to ascertain where such powers were granted, and to question the 
value of such a Union. And when there were added claims that put 
in question their title to so many millions of dollars and their control 
over an institution so interwoven with their social fabric, these ques- 
tionings became more intense. And when to this was added, that 
these claims were founded on pretensions of superior piety in those 
who made them, and accompanied by harsh charges against those 
who were to suffer from them, it is not unnatural that they viewed 
with alarm, mingled with indignation, the gradual and inevitable loss 
of power, the sure increase of the non-slave-holding States, and 
growth of the anti-slavery sentiment. 

It must also be remembered that the liberation of the slave did 
not change his race, nor obliterate from the white race that intense 
race-feeling heretofore mentioned ; nor did it contemplate the removal 
of the freedman. To remove four millions of laborers was an im- 
possibility, and would, if a possibility, be an irretrievable disaster; to 
have four millions of blacks free in the midst of five millions of 
whites, but so unequally distributed that in some sections the blacks 
greatly outnumbered the whites, was indeed to fill the future with un- 
certainty and clouds. 

These blacks, when imported, were savages without traditions and 
without hopes. It is inconceivable to us how a race can be without 
traditions and without hopes. Under the educational power of 
American slavery they had begun to hope, which is the beginning 



Who Were the Confederate Dead ? 31 

of freedom; and in the border States and in the cities, and in those 
who were domestics, there were evidences of the capacity of devel- 
opment. But to contemplate the possibility that South Carolina, 
Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, and Arkansas might become 
black commonwealths was a future to be avoided at any hazard. 
So the cotton States, holding tenaciously to the absolute sovereignty 
of the State and to the constitutional right of secession, separately 
seceded and formed the Confederate Government at Montgomery. 
They had witnessed the secession of Texas from Mexico upon the 
old American doctrine that the consent of the governed was the only 
true foundation of government, and her admission to the Union 
and the necessary approval by the United States that the true con- 
struction of that doctrine was, that the consent meant was that of the 
people of a State, and not of the entire number of States. 

They knew that the Declaration had been formulated by the colo- 
nies that formed only a part of the British Empire, only a part of 
those colonies in America, and it seemed to them absurd to urge that 
before these seven States could found their own government on their 
own consent, they must ask the permission of the very States by whose 
acts the general Government was to be perverted. 

It was not the election of Mr. Lincoln that caused secession in 
any other sense than that this election was accepted as the conclusive 
evidence that — 

1. The Northern States could by themselves elect a President and 
keep permanent control of the Executive Department; 

2. And permanently control both Houses of Congress, and 

3. By appointment soon control the Judicial Department, and 

4. Control the admission of new States, and 

5. That this North was under the domination of the Anti-slavery 
party. 

With the North daily growing in power and permanently under 
the control of the Anti-slavery party, while relatively the South was 
daily growing weaker, it became inevitable that that South was under, 
not of, the Government, and this is political slavery. The forms of 
the governmental powers need not be changed. Continued elections 
according to the old modes would be held, and the prescribed forms 
might be sacredly preserved, but in substance they would have no 
voice in national affairs and no potential part in determining the poli- 
cies to be pursued. And if the threat to prevent secession by force 
was meant, then every day's delay made the inevitable conflict more 



3 2 Who Were the Confederate Dead ? 

unequal. So the- planting States seceded, planting themselves on the 
old plea made in the Declaration of Independence and the newer plea 
that the compact of union was a voluntary agreement of sovereign 
States from which each sovereign had a right to withdraw, and sub- 
mitting that their present prosperity and future safety, the autonomy 
of their States, and the liberty of their citizens depended on their 
own exclusive -management of their own affairs. 

Here there was a distinct pause in the movement. In the powerful 
States of North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas, which 
were partly planting and partly farming States, in whicl^ the whites 
so outnumbered the blacks that there was no danger from liberation, 
in whose borders was a large mountainous population almost wholly 
non-slaveholding, there was great division and consequent hesitation. 
They were loath to give up the Union for the possible dangers of an 
uncertain future, and doubtful of an experiment of two republics, 
coterminous, and divided only by the slave line. They believed 
intensely in that form of local government which the States repre- 
sented; and that whether secession was constitutional or revolution- 
ary, there resided in the general Government no power to make war 
on a seceded State; that war meant the destruction of slavery, the 
virtual destruction of the autonomy of the States, and the consolida- 
tion of arbitrary power in those in possession of the Government. 
They believed that negotiation, concession, peace would restore 
the Union, or in its place, by close treaties of alliance, form two re- 
publics, friendly, mutually reliant, and as to all the world one for de- 
fense. 

These States refused to secede until after the surrender of Fort 
Sumter, and the call of Mr. Lincoln for volunteers. 

Led by Virginia, they had made every effort to effect a compro- 
mise, and, having failed, these States ranged themselves with the 
weaker party in defense of two principles, that governments to be 
free must be founded on the consent of the governed, and that the 
Federal Government had no constitutional power to subdue States 
by arms, and hold the Union together by the bayonet. They believed 
that such power of war meant, no matter under what pretense exer- 
cised, in its ultimate analysis a military despotism, where the discre- 
tion of the administration in temporary possession of office and not 
the Constitution was the measure and warrant of power; that the use 
of force once to subdue a State necessarily destroyed the independ- 
ence of the States, for it was absurd to speak of an independent 



Who Were the Confederate Dead ^ 33 

State subject to be thrashed into submission ; a mere mockery of 
language to talk of the equality of States in a Union where the ma- 
jority of States in possession of the Government had the right as well 
as power to occupy protesting States by military force, and, under 
pretense of executing the law, conquer by the sword. Their fathers 
had revolted from the allegiance due from subjects on a mere ques- 
tion of taxation ; because the assertion of such power involved the 
whole question of their relations to the mother country ; and when 
that mother country undertook "to execute the law" (which is the 
remedy and universal plea of tyranny), they resisted to the death. 
And now these citizens, as citizens and as organized States, refused to 
aid in this forceful " execution of the law" by which seven States 
were to be conquered ; vast armies raised at great expense, to be used 
by an administration which received no votes in those States and 
which represented a pledge that in peace, when the work of conquest 
was over, the whole power of the common Government should be 
exercised, in some mode, under some process, in a spirit hostile, not 
only to those States, but to all the States who had the same institu- 
tion. Being compelled to participate in the conflict, they stood for 
what they were convinced was the cause of liberty, the cause of 
American liberty, liberty preserved by States with exclusive jurisdic- 
tion over internal and local affairs, as against the centralized force 
of unlimited powers exercised in the name of a common government,^ 
grown powerful in large part by the gifts, the labors, the blood, the 
achievements of the gection now on the eve of invasion and con- 
quest; and so these four States entered the Confederate Government 
and the war became flagrant. Events followed each other with start- 
ling rapidity, and the citizens of the eleven Confederate States with 
boundless alacrity entered into the military service of their States 
and Confederacy : amd as against all charge of treason they interposed 
the warrant of their State and the plea of their primary allegiance 
to her and their consequent obedience to that warrant; faithful to 
their duty to their States, obedient to their commands, they gave 
themselves to their defense. To shield their borders from invasion, 
to protect the homes of their beloved ones from ruin, to preserve the 
liberty of their people, these Confederates maintained that unequal 
fight. 

•But among these "dead" are Kentuckians whose State did not 
secede, and for whom no such plea can be made. Are they without 
plea? Shall we who fought with them, who loved them living and 

3 



34 ^^10 Were the Confederate Dead? 

honor them dead, be dumb when their action is awaiting the ver- 
dict of posterity? 

My comrades, we gave the services of our young manhood to that 
cause in violation of the command of our mother — Kentucky. Our 
Kentucky, beloved mistress of our hearts, refused to secede, and yet 
we turned our footsteps southward, and drew our arms to follow 
where Lee or other leader ordered. Kentucky did not call us by 
the voice of a sovereign convention, or the order of her Governor, 
or the act of her legislature, to enter that service. Nay ! for our ser- 
vice her legislature expatriated us, declaring by solemn act that we 
were no longer worthy to be her sons ; her grand juries indicted us 
for treason, and warrants of arrest were issued for our apprehension, 
as if we had been felons. Were Breckinridge and Buckner, and 
Preston, Hanson, and Morgan, and Helm, indeed without excuse in 
thus entering the Confederate service and tempting the ingenuous 
youth who had followed them to form battalions, regiments and bri- 
gades, on whose tattered banners glory abided, whose charge gave 
victory, whose presence forbade panic ? We loved Kentucky ; she 
was worthy of our love. The physical gifts which make her beauti- 
ful among the daughters of the nations were not equal to the heroic 
actions of her sons and the exquisite graces of her daughters. Fair- 
est among ten thousand and altogether lovely was she to our young 
and bounding love. Historic memories clustered about her, and 
every valley and mountain side held the graves of heroes, while from 
every brook and crystal stream ascended melodious anthems to the 
brave and good whose lives had sanctified their banks. We, too, 
loved that old Union of the States, of which we proudly claimed Ken- 
tucky was the heart. At home and abroad our fathers had made it 
famous. For it Kentuckians had won the mighty Mississippi and 
secured the outreaching empire westward to the Rocky Mountains; 
for it Kentuckians fell at the river Raisin, drove Tecumseh to his 
death at the Thames, and charged at the plain of Chalmette ; for it 
McKee and Clay died at Buena Vista, and their kinsmen from 
Vera Cruz to Mexico ; for it Clay taught America the subtile power 
of compromise, the potent influence of concession ; and for it the love 
of all who love mankind and the prayers of all who loved God went 
out in sweet and pious accord. 

Our interests united with our love. She was a border State as 
to her institutions ; she was an interior State as to her surroundings. 
Her products found their market in different sections of the country, 



W/io Were the Confederate Dead ? 35 

and she was dependent alike on the North and the South. She 
could but suffer, whoever else might profit, by division. Whatever 
wrongs others complained of, to greater wrongs she had submitted 
without anger, considering such submission a sacrifice the brave can 
render in the spirit of lofty forbearance. 

No public leader ever dared, even if any ever desired, to urge 
that secession was to her a remedy for any wrong, a step ever to be 
taken for any cause. She knew, her people knew, that secession 
meant war, and war meant the destruction of slavery as an institution, 
and incalculable loss to her. Why then did we turn our backs on our 
homes and our loved ones, and, self-exiled, peril all for a cause she 
had condemned, to secure a result she desired to avert ? 

We did not fight to defend our homes and our hearthstones. 
Mothers and wives and children were not behind us as we stood 
facing the foe. We were not ramparts of fire between an advancing 
enemy and the swelling plains and busy towns of our people. No 
inspiriting crowds, no beating drum and piercing fife, no patriotic 
sweetheart, no overwhelming pressure of public opinion forced us to 
recruit. In squads, by twos or fours or alone, in the night time, by 
by-ways and through the woods, leaving all that was dearest behind, we 
found our way to where we could be mustered into the Confederate 
service. As a rule, each man rode his own horse or paid his own 
way and provided his own arms and outfit. 

It is one of the most striking and picturesque of the many attrac- 
tive studies of the late war, the formation of the Kentucky regiments 
of the Confederate army. Where the First Kentucky in Virginia 
met and organized, Camp Boone in Tennessee, Camp Charity where 
Morgan rested, the rendezvous where Marshall and Williams gathered 
their soldiers, here and there a church or cross-roads where a company 
organized or the neighbor boys met and rode out together, these will 
never cease to be " hallowed ground," for here "majestic men whose 
deeds have dazzled faith " entered on a heroic struggle for true con- 
stitutional liberty, for that liberty which knows no other basis for a 
government than the consent of the governed, and is convinced that 
the conquest of any one State of a federal union involves the right 
to destroy all the States. 

We believed with all sincerity that the apparent and final deter- 
mination of the legislature of Kentucky was not in accordance with 
the wishes of the real majority of her people, that it was a result 
secured by force and fraud, and that, although accomplished " through 



;^6 Who Were the Confederate Dead? 

the forms of law," that it was no more binding than an edict of a 
president or a proclamation of a general ; that the decision was the 
result of exterior force, the power of the Federal Government and 
the Northern States bordering on the Ohio River. 

But I would be uncandid if I rested our defense on this ground 
alone, because for one — and I doubt not I voice the sentiments of 
the majority of the Confederate soldiers from Kentucky — my course 
was not based alone on that belief, and would not have been altered 
if I had been convinced of the precise reverse. 

Many of us did not believe in the right of secession, as it was 
held by our brethren of the South ; still more were convinced that 
secession by separate State action was unwise, if not insulting to the 
other States having common interests. Many believed that the griev- 
ances complained of could be better remedied by united action in 
the Union. But we all, those of whom I am speaking, the Kentucky 
Confederate soldiers, believed that it was purely despotic, without the 
shadow of an excuse to claim and exercise the power to hold by force 
of arms any State, or cluster of States, in unwilling subjection to a 
government, in name federal, and in theory of limited powers, but 
which then would be in fact an unlimited despotism, for the essence 
of despotism is that the government is above the law, and the only 
law of the Federal Union is the Federal Constitution, and the power 
to set aside that law and violate at will its provisions creates in fact a 
despotism — a government whose will is the measure of its power. 

No State could force, no State could justify us in an attack so fatal 
to all the principles on which our liberties rested. 

We knew that forms of government were but means, that all our 
constitutions, both State and Federal, were only modes, that the end 
was the maintenance of liberty ; the substance, the perpetuation of 
free government; and we felt that the claims made by the adminis- 
tration, if allowed, rendered every check in these constitutions worth- 
less, every limitation on the powers granted valueless, and for all 
time gave to those in possession of the Government precedents for 
for any exercise of any power that their interests or their passions 
rendered desirable. At once and for all time the liberties of the citi- 
zen and the rights of the State would find their protection, not in 
the written compacts, but in the pleasure, the fears, the interests, or 
the weakness of those in power. 

If Kentucky could aid twenty Northern States to reduce eleven 
States to provinces, invade their territory, overturn their government, 



W/io Were the Confederate Dead ? 37 

set aside their constitutions, imprison without warrant their citizens, 
garrison their towns and destroy their institutions, then hereafter the 
central government, under the control of eighteen or twenty-five 
States, could at pleasure treat Kentucky after a similar fashion. We 
denied with uplifted hands that the true Kentucky had willingly united 
in this crusade ; but with more resolute hearts we protested that 
neither Kentucky, nor any other number of States, nor any combina- 
tion of people, could thus destroy American liberty, and as our seal 
to this solemn protest we forsook our homes. We had no part nor 
lot in bringing about the dread alternative ; no act of ours, no fault of 
ours, produced that sorrowful dilemma. We were of that generation. 
We were men, and had to play our part as God gave us strength, and 
our choice lay between aiding or resisting the conquest by force of 
arms of eleven sovereign States, containing 5,000,000 of our bretliren, 
and our choice was to stand by the banner which to us represented 
liberty. 

We did not fight for slavery, we did not battle for any particular 
theory of State rights; but we fought for the dear old freedom of our 
fathers. This was no figment of the imagination. It was that funda- 
mental principle declared when our fathers organized into States pos- 
sessing political autonomy, and declared themselves free to choose 
their own government as to them seemed best. 

For this Henry thundered, and Warren on Bunker Hill died ; this 
is what Thomas Jefferson and John Adams reported, and the Conti- 
nental Congress proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence ; for 
this Washington fought and our martyrs fell. This was our compact, 
this the basis of our Federal Union, this the crucial test of our inde- 
pendence, this the corner-stone of free government. 

It may be that our comrades from Missouri and Maryland occu- 
pied a position similar to our own. 

History may render one verdict as to the course pursued by those 
States which formed the Montgomery Congress, and quite a distinct 
verdict as to the course of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and 
Arkansas, and still a third verdict as to us. 

As we recall those distant days when divided duties tore our 
hearts, and the necessities of grave and perilous action pressed upon 
us, we can look all mankmd in the face with the calm consciousness 
that we did what we felt our manhood, our patriotism, our honor 
required ; did it at sacrifices that were sometimes almost crushing, and 
with wounds which have never yet been wholly healed. Our hearts 



38 M^/io Were the Confederate Dead? 

wear the scars of those sad days. God grant our sons may not have 
to face such days ! 

This much, my comrades, seemed to me not inappropriate here 
and now — alike due to you and our dead comrades. I have not 
uttered one word of anger or passion or censure, nor do I intend to. 
Others very dear to us came to precisely the opposite conclusion, and 
with equal courage and better fortune played their part in that mighty 
drama. On the graves of such as have passed beyond, and there 
met their and our brethren, I have naught to lay but fragrant flowers. 
For the living I have naught but a hearty God-speed. 

We were not fighting a personal fight; we were not moved by the 
spirit of spite or anger or revenge. It was with unfeigned sadness, 
with a sorrow too deep for expression, that we entered into the war, 
and only because we could not keep a good conscience otherwise; 
and we were, as we believed, fighting the battle of the North as well 
as of the South, the battle of the free of all nations and ages. 

These were the institutions which produced these heroic men; 
these were the causes for which they gave their lives. And we this 
day take our place with them at that illustrious and distant bar; and 
submit ourselves with them to its august judgment. 

The war resulted in the overwhelming defeat of the " South " — 
its complete conquest. It was fought out to the end, and at that end 
the "South" was prostrate, and the institution of slavery destroyed; 
and to the thoughtful it was also certain that liberation would be fol- 
lowed by enfranchisement. 

The poverty of the Southern States at the close of the war was 
appalling; the desolation beyond description. Every form of accu- 
mulated capital had been swept away, every corporate institution 
hopelessly bankrupt, every State deeply in debt, and the amount of 
private indebtedness beyond all hope of payment. 

A beggared people indeed were they. Fences all gone, work- 
stock nearly so, fields in briars, many houses burnt, no money, no 
credit, no provisions, no implements of industry, not even seed for 
harvest. The negro free; the white adult a paroled soldier or an 
aged man, frequently a disabled and wounded man ; and in many fam- 
ilies only widows, orphan maidens, and fatherless children; without 
political privileges, and with the prospect of a chaotic and harsh 
period of unstable and doubtful rule ; the States without recognized 
governments, and the relations of the races, of the citizens, and of 
the States to the Federal Government in grave dispute and doubt. It 
was indeed a sad and desolate picture ! 



IV/io Were the Confederate Dead? 39 

But all was not lost; far from it. God, the future, and manhood 
remained, and these contain all the possibilities of success. 

There was no alternative left to that people but a stern and reso- 
lute struggle for bread, and then for the recovery of political liberty. 
The war had legislated — it had in a new sense made one the United 
States; in the destiny of the nation was involved the destiny of every 
section and all citizens ; one country, one flag, one destiny, was the 
fiat of this tribunal, and the future of the South was indissolubly 
interwoven with that of the Union. In that Union, under that Gov- 
ernment, however modified by the events of those years, must these 
Southern States work out their restoration. Within the limitations 
imposed by that Government, and by their actual condition, must 
they make their recovery. Without repining, with no unmanly 
cringing, no pretense of repentance or remorse — aye, proud of their 
dead comrades and conscious of their own rectitude and heroism, 
they turned their faces to the future, put their trust anew in God, and 
went to work. It was a pathetic but glorious spectacle, that con- 
quered and beggared people, amid the ruins of their States and the 
destruction of their hopes, surrounded by the graves of their beloved 
slain, and in the depths of poverty, intensely at work for daily bread, 
and resolutely set on doing the best possible under the circumstances 
encompassing them. The privations, the suffering, the toil of those 
slow, sad, harsh years when "the bottom rail was on top," and the 
whole world seemed to have turned from them, need not now be 
recalled. Let them pass into history. 

But the heroism shown by woman and soldier during the four years 
of war was surpassed by the passive, unmurmuring endurance and 
the active, unceasing endeavor of those years of reconstruction and 
restoration. The ultimate result was never for one moment in doubt. 
The inevitable end was certain. The irresistible force residing in 
intelligence, education, nianhood ; the potential, even if invisible, 
influence of race and its peculiar qualities, the peculiar dominating 
power of this EngUsh-speaking race, the pervasive energy of inher- 
ited liberty, and the hereditary habit of command, rendered the vic- 
tory in peace certain in the progress of time. Faithful to their 
parole ; faithful to the higher obligations of a renewed citizenship ; 
faithful to their duty to their children who were to live under this 
Government; faithful to the hopes of their future, which were inter- 
twined with that of the common country, they gave implicit obedience 
to, and hearty labor for the common country, to which, by the for- 



40 tV/io Were the Confederate Dead ? 

tunes of war and the decrees of Providence, they were indissolubly 
bound. They had staked and lost, and in good faith abided the 
result. They had submitted to the arbitrament of arms, and the ver- 
dict was against them, and they bowed to it completely, without reser- 
vation or murmur. I do not mean without sorrow, but I do mean 
without murmur. It was accepted as final, irretrievable, irreversible. 
There was not a corporal's guard, there has not been since the war, 
there is not now, who hoped, who dreamed, who desired to make 
another appeal to arms, or to make another effort to establish the 
Confederacy. 

It was ordained that the experiment of American liberty should 
be tried under one Union, without slavery, and with the enfranchised 
negro ; and with one heart the " South " went to work to perform 
with absolute fidelity her part of this mighty enterprise. And her 
people in their desolation never despaired. It was not what they 
yearned for, but it was worth every labor and all sacrifices. The 
land was infinitely more precious for the very blood, shed as if in 
vain. The spots new hallowed were dearer than all the land had 
been before. The precious landscapes, where new graves sanctified 
fields with new but now immortal names, were more exquisite to their 
hearts than any had ever been in days of yore. 

The Church at Shiloh, the tangled underbrush of the Wilderness, 
the banks of Stone's River, the sad field of Chancellorsville, glorious 
names and beloved spots, held with incalculable strength their hearts 
to the idolized though impoverished land. 

There, too, remained free institutions, perhaps with larger powers, 
even if with more contingent dangers ; and in the larger possibilities 
of the future their children would play their part as became the sons 
of such sires. So they turned to the future. 

The first necessity was bread, to regain the physical comforts of 
life, to rebuild houses, to reclaim the soil for tillage, to reorganize 
society, to make labor efficient, and to this they devoted themselves. 

They had also to adjust themselves to the new order and condi- 
tion of society : to bring order, peaceful, civil, established constituted 
order into domination, to make regnant the ordinary every-day forms 
of civil law and social procedure. Both these labors were accom- 
plished. The Southern States became prosperous, and one by one 
resumed their legal equality in the Federal Government. The kindly 
agencies of nature united with the active industries of man to hasten 
this labor and to efface the visible evidences of war. Day by day 



Who Were the Confederate Dead 7 41 

the " North " came to see that these people were indeed in good faith, 
and were indeed at work, and to reaUze that this section, so large 
in territory, so rich in resources, so blessed in climate, and with such 
a population, was a factor of vast importance to their future. 

The steady acquiescence with which they contributed their por- 
tion to the payment of a public debt incurred to subdue them ; the 
quiet promptness with which their representatives united in generous 
pensions to the soldiers who had conquered them ; the conservative 
tone of thought and simple integrity of their public servants grad- 
ually won confidence and respect. Slowly the animosities of the con- 
flict continue to subside. The constant pressure of business inter- 
course, the ceaseless influence of social kinship, the effect of marriage 
and intermarriage, the power of a foreign immigration who were not 
participants in those transactions, the necessity of absorption in the 
daily duties of a busy life, the new alignments caused by new ques- 
tions, will gradually do their work. 

It is in all essentials one people with so many common memories, 
and only common hopes; and at the bottom there is that mutual 
respect which courage, devotion to duty, and manly virtues inspire. 

There were never better soldiers, never so good armies as the 
American armies of that unhappy war, and this aU soldiers of either 
army accord with admiration to the soldiers of the other army. Here, 
at least, there was cause for universal commendation. As Americans 
all could be proud of the American soldier. Lee might be a traitor, 
but he was a great captain and a pure gentleman ; Jackson a rebel, 
but he was also a Christian soldier of superb gifts and stainless life, 
and his " foot cavalry " was never surpassed in march or charge or 
retreat, and in their hearts every Northern soldier was proud that his 
Southern brethren were of such stuff. Indeed, every monument 
erected to a Federal soldier is also a monument to commemorate the 
skill, the courage, the heroism of the Confederate, for it is because of 
triumph over such soldiers that these monuments are erected. 

So, too, we have given without scant measure our meed of praise 
to those who withstood the charge of serried array, or who broke in 
irresistible might over our trenches ; to those who held the heights of 
Gettysburg against Lee and Longstreet, and drove Pickett backward 
from his wondrous charge ; who held Franklin in spite of Hood and 
Cleburne ; to Thomas who stood so firm at Chickamauga ; and Sher- 
man who marched from Dalton to the sea ; to the silent and placable 
Grant, who compelled Donelson, Vicksburg, and Richmond to 



42 Who Were the Confederate -Dead? 

acknowledge his power, and who gave generous terms to Lee, and 
with proud honesty demanded that the terms be respected. Honor 
alike to his prowess as a soldier and his honor as a conqueror. 

And year by year this will grow. Long ago, in this same beautiful' 
month of May, standing by the Confederate graves in that dear cem- 
etery which lies adjacent to my own beloved city, in the presence of 
"those who loved those dead, and were there to honor their memory 
by strewing the first flowers of spring over their graves, I said : 

" In the presence of this sad assemblage, in the presence of the 
dead, in the sight of God, I feel that it would be sacrilege to utter one 
word that is not in every sense true. With this solemn thought press- 
ing upon me, I believe that I utter the sentiment of those who hear 
me, when I say that we trust the day may come when such a peace 
will bless our land that all the living will lovingly do honor to all the 
dead. We are all x\mericans — we ^re citizens of a common country 
in whose destinies are involved the destinies of our children. Around 
us in this cemetery lie buried the dead of all. On that resurrection 
morn all will rise side by side to meet Him who died for all. Relig- 
ion, patriotism, the love we bear our children, alike appeal with elo- 
quent earnestness for the return of good feeling and brotherly love." 

On that day I had no doubt ; on this day, when nearly a score of 
years have passed away, I feel assured that this generation will live 
to see -that day. It has not come to all. In some hearts bitterness 
still reigns. But it has come to the noble, except where the sorrow 
at personal loss was too overwhelming to be assuaged, and it will come 
before many years elapse. 

This English-speaking race must dominate the world ; its peculiar 
Christian civilization is the transforming power of the conquests of 
the future; at the head of this race is the proper place of the Ameri- 
can Republic ; that republic which is being evolved and strengthened 
from and by all the sections and all its citizens. Of course it will have 
its trials and dangers ; the problem of African slavery has given place 
to the problem of the diverse races ; the necessity for local self-gov- 
ernment is as absolute now as ever before, and precisely what shall be 
the line of demarkation between the Federal and the State powers is 
to be settled by each generation as new questions arise, and always 
will grave problems meet the American statesman. But it has emerged 
from that war without slavery: with peaceful secession impossible; 
with its own consciousness of its almost illimitable resources; with 
the world's knowledge of its marvelous strength ; with the demonstra- 



Who Were the Confederate Dead ? 43 

tion that its present machinery of government is ample for every emer- 
gency, and with no present issue on which after a lapse of a very few 
years ought there to be division on sectional lines. 

We are now a nation of soldiers, with full acquaintance with what 
civil war actually means, and our statesmen belong to a generation 
trained amidst the necessities of a tremendous war. 

This new generation now coming into power, this post-bellum gen- 
eration, who will soon be dominant, has been trained North and 
South under auspices, influences, surroundings wholly unlike those 
by which we were trained. In the North the youth are not trained 
to overthrow slavery ; in the South their youth are not trained to 
defend slavery. In the admission of new States, in the settlement of 
new territories, there is no " balance of power " to be maintained or 
overcome. No longer must the surplus of Southern enterprise be 
invested in new lands to be tilled by owned labor ; and this surplus 
will seek, is seeking new enterprises, and diversified industries are 
supplanting the old-fashioned way of raising a single product. This 
will cause new rivalries, new combinations, new adjustments, which 
will in time cause new political alliances. 

Out of all these varied causes the republic of the future will 
emerge, the joint product of not only the North and South, but the 
West and those hosts of immigrants who yearly seek homes in our 
midst. Immigration means not only the addition of so many men, 
so many persons, so much money, but the introduction into our lives 
of new thoughts, other traditions, other customs, other hopes. These 
immigrants bring with them their household gods, their religion and 
their thought and these become part of those occult but controlling 
forces which develop a people and mold a nation. 

I believe in the controlling force of law in the social world as im- 
plicitly as I do in the ordained order in the natural world ; in the 
power of ordained progress through the omnipotent activity of moral 
forces as I do in the agencies of physical forces. I believe in the 
correlation of cause and effect in political and social development. 
It is obscure because the data are very numerous, their relative value 
as yet comparatively unknown, and we have not carefully sought to 
explore this domain of science. Thus believing, I protest that the 
war was not in vain. It was unavoidable ; from it there was no 
escape. I protest that the sacrifices made by the South were not in 
vain. They form part of those resistless forces which will enter into 
our national life, which is the sum of all the forces at work to develop 



44 JVko Were the Confederate Dead? 

our country ; and the future of that country depends very largely on 
that South. We can not measure the relative value of these forces. 
When Caesar fell at the foot of Pompey's statue, when Rome was 
avenged on Arminius for " Varro's Legions," when William Wallace 
met a traitor's fate, when Charles the Second was recalled from exile, 
when Napoleon died at St. Helena, who could have foretold what 
history now narrates ? 

It is, indeed, a surpassing future which tempts us to noble duties. 
No people ever was given such theater upon which to perform their 
part : A magnificent continent to be peopled ; and that with a race of 
educated and enlightened Christian freemen, whose destiny it is to 
give constitutional liberty to the world, and whose duty it is to be fit 
for such high destiny. "Give constitutional liberty to the world," 
how much is included in those simple words! 

Midway between Europe and the continents where the colored 
races have had the centuries for their development, with a language 
that is fit vehicle for immortal aspirations and eternal hopes, with the 
pervasive spirit of orderly liberty, with the irresistible power of a 
divine religion, our mission is full of ineffable glory. 

There need be no other limit to growth than that set by justice to 
our neighbor and the duties to humanity. Every field of greatness 
opens before us, and all good and noble enterprises beckon us to 
intenser labors. Sorrows and sacrifices, errors and follies, " the bru- 
tahties and ferocities of progress," perhaps bloodshed and crime, may 
be part of the future; this has always been, this is but the lot of man- 
kind. But in spite o f these the advancing day grows brighter, the 
climbing sun shines more radiantly, the horizon widens before our 
entranced vision, and we press on with unfaltering heart into that 
future which lies before us. 

At the foot of this stately monument of granite, this stone hewn 
from the mountains of Maine, now planted in the heart of Kentucky in 
honor of soldiers from States so distant as Texas, we pray God to grant 
that in that ceaseless contest our children may be as heroic, as enduring, 
as pure as these unknown dead; ready to live for the right, willing if 
need be to die for the right, as God gives it to them to see the right. 

I crave pardon for a single personal allusion. Some of these dead 
were of " Woodward's Kentucky Cavalry," with which battalion I 
served in the same brigade from September, 1863, until the end of 
the war, and which from October, 1864, until May, 1865, served under 
my command. 



Who Were the Confederate Dead ? 45, 

Its commanders, Col. Woodward and Maj, Lewis, its officers and 
men, were therefore well known to me. It can not add to their repu- 
tation that I should praise them, but it is to me a sincere gratification 
to have opportunity to testify to my own appreciation of all soldiery 
qualities by declaring my love for and admiration of them. It was 
indeed a superb body of men, with a proud and glorious record. 
Trusted by Forrest, that Wizard of the Saddle, they were worthy of 
him and his confidence. I bow my uncovered head in reverent 
honor to the heroic dead of that beloved command, and with grati- 
tude and friendship undiminished by the lapse of twenty-two years, I 
hail with proud comradeship its no less heroic living. 

On this monument these heroes are called " unknown ; " and is this 
so? In the twenty-five years since they were buried here, the evi- 
dence of their names have been lost, and to-day we know not by 
what names they were known. In that sense they are are unknown; 
but their names are not lost. On the muster-rolls of their commands 
their honored names remain ; on the hearts of those who loved them 
and mourned for them their precious names are engraven; on God's 
roll on high their immortal names are radiant. We can not repeat 
their names; we can honor their memories; we can reverence their 
deeds; we can emulate their virtues ; we can commemorate their deaths. 

On this gentle ascent stand, thou silent witness, and testify to all 
who come to this sacred place — here in the awful presence of the 
buried dead, in the tearful sight of the recurring visitations on the sad 
errand of burial, in the august presence of an ever-living God — that 
to lofty virtues, sanctified by death, and to noble hopes, purified by 
sorrows and sacrifice, there, is an immortality of bliss. 



